The American Conference Institute will hold its third annual EPR Think Tank on Jan. 26-27 in New York City, bringing the extended producer responsibility policy conversation back to the venue that has hosted it for three consecutive cycles.

Two days. One city. One topic that now sits at the center of every packaging and recycling compliance calendar in the country: who pays for the end of life of materials, and by what deadline.

What is the EPR Think Tank?

The American Conference Institute, a conference organizer that runs legal and regulatory events across regulated industries, launched the Think Tank as a standing forum on extended producer responsibility for packaging and printed paper. This is the third edition, which makes it one of the few recurring, dedicated EPR gatherings on the East Coast calendar.

The format is a policy and legal workshop rather than a trade show. Attendees typically include brand owners, producers, compliance teams, packaging suppliers, reclaimers and the law firms advising them — the people who have to turn producer-responsibility statutes into operating budgets.

The takeaway: this is where implementation questions get worked through, not where new pledges get announced.

Why the third edition matters more than the first

Timing does a lot of work here. When ACI ran the first Think Tank, extended producer responsibility for packaging was still a legislative proposal in most U.S. jurisdictions. By the third edition, the conversation has moved from whether states will adopt EPR to how fast programs will launch, what fees producers will actually pay, and whether material recovery infrastructure can absorb the volumes the statutes assume.

That shift changes who shows up. Early editions drew policy specialists. This one lands in front of operations and finance teams who need cost forecasts, not talking points.

Each edition also builds a record. Three years of agendas, speakers and attendee questions now trace how the U.S. producer-responsibility debate has matured — from framework debates to program rules, eco-modulated fee schedules and reporting deadlines.

The plain summary: a conference's third year is when it stops being a novelty and becomes part of the compliance calendar.

What should attendees and observers watch?

For producers and packaging-sector attendees, the Jan. 26-27 dates matter because they sit early in the calendar year — ahead of the reporting and registration cycles that state EPR programs run on. Sessions held in late January tend to set the compliance agenda companies work against for the following twelve months.

For the recycling and reclaimed-materials side, the relevant question is how much of the discussion connects producer fees to actual infrastructure investment: new sorting capacity, contracts with material recovery facilities, and guaranteed offtake for recovered fiber and rigid plastics.

For regulators and observers, the value is in the room itself. When producers, agencies and advisors gather under one roof two years into real program rollouts, the friction points surface quickly — data quality, fee allocation, and the pace at which obligated parties can stand up compliance systems.

The one-line read: watch what gets argued about in the hallways, because those arguments become next year's rulemakings.

What happens next

The milestone to track is simple: the event runs Jan. 26-27 in New York City. What comes out of it — which program deadlines get discussed, which fee structures get challenged, which compliance gaps get named on stage — will set the agenda for producer-responsibility implementation through the rest of the year.

By Daniel Okafor